


Snow-broth

by Dustseeing (dustseeing)



Category: Measure for Measure - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 07:13:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2842574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustseeing/pseuds/Dustseeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angelo and Isabella make new vows in the aftermath of the Duke's return.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snow-broth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marketchippie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marketchippie/gifts).



“Isabella?”

Isabella had built a prison for herself. She saw the future inscribed in rib-bones, her brother’s rib-bones, solid bars built of fornication. Her brother’s skull watches her, empty sockets where the soul has fled- to better places, she prays in a pattering orison, ave, ave, ave. The crowd roars around her- she has always heard their calls for justice, justice, justice but they have meant nothing to her. She has always thought- not felt, but thought- that justice was the true virtue. A pure and demanding light, and it demanded much of her, she knew- her chastity, her obedience, her poverty. 

All those she would give up to justice. 

She would call it God.

And then came Angelo. Bright-faced Lucifer that he is, sent to show her the very light of justice. And at first she admired this crusader. Vienna needed, indeed still needs justice. She can feel the slough of corruption between her toes as the foulness of the streets seeps through her satin shoes. Can smell its stink rising in her nostrils. The rottenness of her neighbours- who care little for mercy, who have heard her shouts for justice and responded with pure hatred, who would see Duke, Angelo, these vicious men all strung high up over the battlements and rejoice in it- and Isabella forces herself to also rejoice in it. This is her prison, this is the cage she has built herself. 

“You must come to make your vows.”

She considers her brother. A fornicator, yes, though only within the law, and yet the law is a vow, is it not? Formed from oaths, vows, promises- between man and man, woman and woman and woman, between states and enterprises and, yes, between her and God. And Isabella is conscious- painfully conscious- that if, in his heart, Angelo has made a vow to her, it must surely be as binding as her vow to God, or his vow to Mariana. Does that not make them married?

There was a moment- as the sack is pulled from her brother’s ashen face, a rough bridal veil- when Isabella realised she was in prison, a prison she has built for herself. Its name is justice. And if the Duke can dispense mercy like gentle rain from heaven, her prison’s roof is built with strong mortar and will keep her dry as bones.

“Isabella?”

It is time. She will make new vows, but first- first she must free Angelo from his.

She has written a letter. He must be there.

***

“My Lord?”

His false wife is at his side. He barely hears her. He has dealt with many prison-warders, officers and provosts, and his false wife is just another in that vein. And yet not so- for the others would leap to obey every one of his orders, and this one will not obey, though she has sworn to do so. Are his orders so unjust that it is just to ignore them? Or does mercy rule now, untempered by justice? If so, he is doubly condemned.

Angelo has built a prison for himself. He saw his past caught in hangman’s knots, looping their way around the necks of sinners. And he will hang himself on them, because what other fate remains for a Judas, who has broken every trust placed in him, every vow made by him? The crowd roars for the Duke, in his cloth-of-gold, and Angelo prays. It is a panicked prayer at first, the desperate bargaining of a condemned man, he promises anything to God- his position, his wealth, everything save his dignity. For a moment he feels darkness cover him, hiding him, and he blesses it. And then the Duke is revealed, like the sun bursting through storm clouds, and there is the rain, heavy beating rain that has ruined him. It falls on the just and on the unjust alike, and Angelo- righteous Angelo, just Angelo- is destroyed.

“An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!”

And the crowd roared back, “Death for death!”, and Angelo was willing, endlessly willing. It was just, it was right. He never feared death- embraced it indeed- yet now he feels he is in a sort of waking death, falling short of the true resurrection. The false wife- he still cannot think of her as his true wife, though he has been one flesh with her, has vowed to her, sleeps under the same roof- Mariana has ruined him. In that moment before she claimed him, he considered himself dead- and any marriage must be dissolved by death.

Angelo was as foolish as Solomon was wise, but he has been joined to two wives now- once by love and once by vows- though still far short of Solomon’s fabled number. Perhaps, he thinks, he is no Solomon but the child raised by two women, who the threat of death was enough to reveal the true mother. That might have been enough for Angelo, to be torn apart and the truth revealed. But his false wife claimed him and his true wife denied him. And now-

“Isabella will not take her vows.”

Silence.

“My Lord Angelo?”

There is blood pounding in his ears, it is the Duke’s return over again, it is the death of Claudio, it is the horrid kindness of Mariana. Every failure, every hateful little death that unjustly condemned him to mercy. He wonders for a moment whether this is some trick, some trap, to make him believe that his true wife’s vows will false, that the just God which has always fore-claimed Isabella has relinquished her at last. No. Mariana has not the mind to play with him. He would never have been caught by her otherwise.

He must convince Isabella to say her vows. He will be her father, not her groom, and give her away to God. He will give her to justice, and be free.

He lies.

He goes.

***

They come together just beyond the chapel of the prison, above the graves of suicides and criminals, where the yew tree forms a bower of death above their heads. Snow has covered it, a true deep-winter bedsheet. Flurries of snow make a wedding veil. A bone shatters underfoot, and shards sent back into the earth of Vienna. The vows they made to themselves are broken, and they form new vows, new promises, free at last from the inhuman constraints of justice and mercy. And there they make a marriage, a true marriage, and their wedding bed is biting snow, as cold and as pure as their heart-blood.


End file.
